IBM

eComStation

What was the selling argument for OS/2 other than real dos compatibility?
I understand that some applications must have been developed solely for this platform, such as SGI/Discreet, or OpenVMS/RDB for instance?

It was "the Windows" before Microsoft pulled out and started the later Windows Product family and IBM continued along with it.
Stability I guess might have been one selling point. I think another reason was "you can't be fired for buying IBM" rhetoric of the day.
I think at least two very large banks had OS/2 as the standard operating environment for decades.
At least one of them might still do.
I don't think anything on OS/2 passed as the "killer app" but people liked the multi-tasking and stability of it.

I have not touched OS/2 for a very long time, before Warp was out even but as far as I know this is how things went. I thought I saw something like desktop sharing a friend was demoing in OS/2 literally decades ago... I am a little vague about it and if I recall it was OS/2 to OS/2. Something like tech support desktop remote or something corporate sounding. A quick google and I saw something that looks like it might have been it... System View...
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg242596.pdf

Some people saw X11 running on UNIX and VMS machines and saw the ability to spawn windows on other machines, they created Citrix, Microsoft went into partnership with them and took the technology and created Microsoft Terminal Services. Now even though Citrix came up with the idea and the original tech, every time Citrix sells a product they have to sell Microsoft licenses and pay royalties. Something like that was paraphrased to me by a fellow Citrix employee when I worked at Citrix. As far as I know, Citrix MTS came after the break up between MSFT and IBM so if it exists in OS/2 or later versions, its a bolt on.

What was the selling argument for OS/2 other than real dos compatibility?
I understand that some applications must have been developed solely for this platform, such as SGI/Discreet, or OpenVMS/RDB for instance?

In the early days it was that OS/2 provided a real protected protected mode graphical operating system. MS didn't go there until NT, and OS/2 was cheaper than a full UNIX with X11 (and, originally, would run on an AT).

OS/2 2.0 provided full 32-bit environment.

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

What was the selling argument for OS/2 other than real dos compatibility?
I understand that some applications must have been developed solely for this platform, such as SGI/Discreet, or OpenVMS/RDB for instance?

In the early days it was that OS/2 provided a real protected protected mode graphical operating system. MS didn't go there until NT, and OS/2 was cheaper than a full UNIX with X11 (and, originally, would run on an AT).

OS/2 2.0 provided full 32-bit environment.

This is nice, I think I'm going to keep running it as a workstation, would you be able to point me to OS/2 friendly (or DOS or Win16) vt520 emulators (commercial or free)?

This is nice, I think I'm going to keep running it as a workstation, would you be able to point me to OS/2 friendly (or DOS or Win16) vt520 emulators (commercial or free)?

It's often good to check for the latest/last version of Kermit for a given platform. Kermit95 supports Windows back to at least NT, OS/2, and several others. It offers dozens of terminal emulations from ADM3A to Wyse 50, including the usual DEC suspects. But you also get telnet, ssh, Kerberos, and on and on.

<nitpicking>
To be honest, the graphics engine (PMGPI) of 2.0 was still a 16-bit DLL, as the 32-bit rewrite could not be completed in time for the april '92 release. The 32-bit PMGPI shipped from 2.1 onwards.
</ntipicking>

This is nice, I think I'm going to keep running it as a workstation, would you be able to point me to OS/2 friendly (or DOS or Win16) vt520 emulators (commercial or free)?

It's often good to check for the latest/last version of Kermit for a given platform. Kermit95 supports Windows back to at least NT, OS/2, and several others. It offers dozens of terminal emulations from ADM3A to Wyse 50, including the usual DEC suspects. But you also get telnet, ssh, Kerberos, and on and on.

The OS/2 and eComStation community hangs out at OS2World.com. eComStation is not a perfect OS and we lack some hardware support, but we are still fighting as a community to grow and gain more relevance.

Serenity System does not does much development this days on eComStation, the company supporting eComStation is Mensys located at the Netherlands. They are the ones that keep developing for this platform and releasing new versions of eComStation.

Something that is interesting is that Mensys does not have the full OS/2 source code. The good things about OS/2 is that is architecture was so well structured that almost everything can be be patched over the original implementation. This is one of the reasons why OS/2 keeps running today. I had tried to discuss OS/2 architecture on this blog:
http://openwarp.blogspot.com/
(with a of other philosophical stuff).

I really hope that we can grow as a community and keep improving the platform. My dream is that one day we can have an open source OS/2 clone as ReacOS and Haiku OS are doing. (with Windows and BeOS).

I know, it's relatively sad to start an article on such a great OS and post no pictures. Truth is, I didn't find how to take pictures; but fear not, I've since got rid of eComStation on my x86 box, and will place it in VirtualBox, reason is, I like it and it would be a better fit there (for me). When this will be done, I'll post some pictures (VirtualBox's instances can be exported via a plethora of protocols, sadly, no vizserver).

Serenity System does not does much development this days on eComStation, the company supporting eComStation is Mensys located at the Netherlands. They are the ones that keep developing for this platform and releasing new versions of eComStation.

Ah, Mensys. The company that picked up PDP-11 stuff ages ago.

Perhaps they'll get OVMS now as well?

_________________
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

There are those who say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. To them I reply: "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

"It is by instruction set extensions alone I virtualize my infrastructure.
The extensions intercept I/O instructions, the handlers support abstraction,
abstraction becomes virtualization. It is by the instruction set extensions
alone I virtualize my infrastructure."

(inspired by the Mentat chant written for Piter DeVries by David Lynch)